This is an important part of the support GDS will now offer local authorities through the Local Digital Declaration, which was announced yesterday.

How Notify and Pay can help local authorities

Local authorities provide a huge range of services to their users. Many of these services involve sending messages or taking payments.

GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay provide a quick, easy and cheap way for service teams to do this. They can be easily integrated into existing services, or used without any systems integration. GOV.UK Notify can already be used without procurement and, later this year, GOV.UK Pay will be too.

Following months of user research and trials with a number of service teams in local authorities, we’re confident that GOV.UK Notify and Pay are now ready for the same widespread use in local government.

What we learned from working with local government

We’ve always thought that GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay could be just as useful for local authorities as they are for central government departments. But we wanted to see if local authorities had any different needs because they do operate in a different context.

The main finding from the trials was validation that the same common needs that exist in central government exist in local government too.

In fact, the only significant enhancement that we added to the platforms as a result of these trials, was enhanced branding options. We needed to better support the diverse range of brands that exist in local government to make sure a user’s experience is consistent throughout their entire journey.

How you can use it

If you’re from a local authority, visit GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay, where you can find more details about what our platforms offer – and create a trial account to have a play.

About Government as a Platform

This blog is about our work with departments and agencies to build common components that can be shared and reused to make it easy for service teams across government to design, assemble and build services.